Free The Skybound Sea by Samuel Sykes Page A

when he looked back, toward the distant huts and the figure standing amongst them.
    Bralston stood out in the open, unabashed, unafraid. A Librarian did not need to hide. This Librarian, however, didn’t bother to hide many things. The stare he fixed upon Denaos among them.
    Denaos, too, did not bother to hide his stare. In the moment they met, the brief moment before Denaos turned and stalked into the distant forest, there was a brief trial. Accusation, confession, sentence, all handed down in the span of a blink.
    And Denaos knew what he needed most, then. In the feel of heavy leather on his wrist and in the sound of feet crunching upon sand, following him into the forest, he knew.
    This, at least, would be easier.

FOUR
THE DEAD MIND
    S he was floating, drifting upon a current that seemed to obey her without a word. Through the fish that had thinned from colorful curtains to ragged schools, over coral that was dying out and becoming barren desert underneath Lenk’s feet, still stubbornly bound to the sandy floor.
    But no matter how he changed his pace or tried to navigate through the coral, she remained always above him. Her shadow was colder than he had expected.
    “You’re not talking,” he said.
    A condition she was apparently not prepared to break with his stunning observation.
    “If you don’t talk, this all seems slightly more insane,” Lenk continued, throwing up his hands. “Because now
I
have to start looking for meaning everywhere.”
    He swept his stare around the sea floor. The coral had vanished, leaving nothing but the most stubborn outcroppings of rock. The sole fish was a lone, ragged creature: something that vaguely looked like a bloated axe-head if bloated axe-heads were capable of eating disorders and stares that belonged to veterans, whores, and herb-addicts. Everything about the creature suggested something that had no business existing and being keenly aware of it as it slowly swam away from decent sea-going society.
    Lenk blinked, staring blankly. “Okay, this one is going to take some doing.” He held out his hand, as if to grasp the meaning implied by this finned degenerate. “All right … it looks like a … what? Some kind of hoe? So, it’s suggesting I invest a future of farming … fish?” He furrowed his brow, looking thoughtful. “I guess that’s not the weirdest way this could—”
    “Ask me.”
    Her voice struck him across the cheek. A shadow stared down at him, not nearly dark enough to hide the merciless blue of her stare.
    His words tasted like salt. “Ask you what?”
    Her glare and the abrupt end to his heartbeat suggested they both knew the answer. It didn’t start again until the words had pulled themselves from his mouth.
    “Who are you?”
    She shook her head. His heart moved under her gaze, trying to avoid being seen behind an immodest curtain of flesh. He wanted to say anything else. If he didn’t say it, though, someone else would.
    And they would speak much louder than she could.
    “What do I have to do?” he asked.
    “Kill.”
    “I don’t want to.”
    “I wasn’t talking about your friends.”
    “Neither was I.”
    She looked inside him. What she saw caused him to turn his head down. He was not lying.
    “You listened,” she whispered, “to the demons.”
    Neither was she.
    He
had
listened when the demons had spoken to him. Specifically, when
the
demon spoke to him. Ulbecetonth, the Kraken Queen, Mother Deep; he could still hear her voice coming from the faint place his conscience should speak from. And like a conscience should, she begged him not to.
    Not to interfere with her plans, not to embark on his errand to retrieve the tome, not to spill the blood of her faithful and her children. Not to force her to listen to the cries of her dying children as they bled out on his sword.
    If he let his mind empty, in the moments between his breathing and the voices talking in his head, he could hear them, too. They cried so loud. And so